Would you abandon this siege?

[IrishGirl]

Question: Should a player abandon the siege of a fortress - even if it's at 40% - if they're about to be attacked by an enemy army on poor terrain? If not, at what point should they abandon it (or stay to fight it out)? This is one part of the game that I continue to fail at.

Here's the situation: Early game, 1470-ish. I'm at war and have approximately 22 regiments and 11k manpower. I'm fighting an adversary with 18 regiments and 12k manpower. I have 9 regiments sieging a fort province and 13 in reserve in the adjoining province (I am Castile, the belligerent is Morocco, and I'm deep in their territory). The war has gone well so far. The siege is at +40% and the Moroccans are attacking in force ... all 18k.

The fort is located in a mountain province - and there's a river crossing. This means the AI (Morocco) will get the defenders bonus when they attack. I will be fighting as the attacker and suffer the malus. I have a 1/5/2/1 general and they have a 1/2/1/0 general. We are both at 3/3/5 at monarch tech. My troops have approximately 40% professionalism. I have 71 prestige and 23 power projection. War exhaustion is around 5.

My reserve forces will arrive 2 days after the Moroccan army. What would you do?

Option 1: Fight it out! Advance reserves and put an end to this war!

Option 2: Get the hell out of there, fool! This is a recipe for disaster.

Or provide another option, if you have one. I'll post the actual results after people have had a chance to comment. I'm curious how others would have handled this situation.

 

[rs2excelsior]

22 vs 18 in the mountains is iffy. You've got more maneuver so you should get rid of the crossing penalty, but that's a -2 in the fire phase and a +1 in shock (compared to their modifiers, which isn't a 100% accurate way of looking at things, but still gives a sense of expected casualties). Two days before reserves arrive isn't bad, though. I'd probably back off unless I had an advantage in troop quality. Bait them into attacking then return to the siege once you've beaten them. It's not suicidal to stand and fight by any means, but too much of an even fight for my taste.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Repeatedly order the 13 stack to reinforce the 9 stack and cancel if the Moroccan troops decide not to fight. Loop that until you take the fort if they won't engage.

A 3 shock advantage + flanking at equal tech with a morale advantage should favor you despite mountain terrain. Do not get caught 18 vs 9.

This is not a war where you should be at 5 war exhaustion...you're losing resources unnecessarily in this one if you've taken that much attrition/casualties.

 

[Blust]

Savescumming ?

 

[IrishGirl]

Repeatedly order the 13 stack to reinforce the 9 stack and cancel if the Moroccan troops decide not to fight. Loop that until you take the fort if they won't engage.

A 3 shock advantage + flanking at equal tech with a morale advantage should favor you despite mountain terrain. Do not get caught 18 vs 9.

This is not a war where you should be at 5 war exhaustion...you're losing resources unnecessarily in this one if you've taken that much attrition/casualties.

Good point. Let me explain: This game had an odd peaceful quality through the first few years. England gave back Maine, there was no war with France, North Africa was locked into a number of alliances. Literally nothing was happening.

Then Aragon attack me. France was their ally. I defended myself admirably (I think) and evenutally France was pulled into another war. I peaced out with them and then took a single province from Aragon and ended up with reduced manpower and a quite a bit of war exhaustion.

Meanwhile, Morocco and Portugal fought a war that Portugal lost. Morocco ended up with all of North Africa, including the critical crossing area, and a single province in Portugal. Portugal lost their navy and was reduced to 0 manpower.

After my war with Aragon ended, I considered that I had the opportunity to attack Morocco. They were certainly weaker than they were before. They had two allies, both small African nations. Still, they controlled the Gibralter crossing area - and I see that as a key area that Castile needs to control in order to grow. (Cadiz, Gibralter, Tangeirs and the other one). Basically, I thought I saw an opportunity to strike at Morocco and claim that area. They had fewer forces than I did (24k to 27k) and less manpower. I took that area quickly but with attrition. In hindsight, I should have peaced out after taking Fez.

Also, I could have brute forced the war exhaustion down before declaring, but I didn't. Even if I had, as you say, I was suffering some significant attrition. Going deeper into Morocco cost more than I thought it would.

 

[Turbo215]

Probably 1, as has been said technically your army has the advantage in numbers and arguably rolls, shock is much more important early than fire, Castile starts with 15% morale and Morocco has no direct combat advantages this early, also which idea groups/ideas have you/morocco got so far do you have any mil advisors that might help morale/discipline etc ultimately though you could retreat with option 1 if you end up getting bad rolls as you should have enough manpower to replenish losses and then attack the Moroccan army on better terms.

 

[IrishGirl]

Correct, I have morale bonuses from the Reconquista and the moral bonus advisor.

To be clear, at this point in the war, I control over half of Morocco - the land down to the last two forts (the one by the trade node and the one in the mountains). The warscore is 63% in my favor.

Savescumming ?

Nope. Working on achievements.

 

[Turbo215]

The warscore is 63% in my favor.

Would you consider just making peace before the battle? 63% warscore is quite a lot, you could always get more land in later wars.

Edit: That's a 25% morale advantage from both reconquista and the advisor and you have good prestige and some PP so i'd imagine you would win the battle it would have to go pretty bad to lose.

 

[IrishGirl]

Would you consider just making peace before the battle? 63% warscore is quite a lot, you could always get more land in later wars.

In the future, I will definitely do this.

 

[Turbo215]

In the future, I will definitely do this.

It tends to be something i do quite a lot, if i can get some of my objectives without having to put the whole war at risk then i normally find it to be worth it unless you're going for WC or some other time essential achievement that is.

 

[True_Heir_of_Rome]

Yeah, I think it's time to peace out. No need to cost yourself all that manpower to take land with high coring cost. Take what you want/need and their money.

The only way I can see it being worth it is if they are your rival, and you plan to humiliate. Northern Africa is late game territory, when you have high admin efficiency.

 

[IrishGirl]

It tends to be something i do quite a lot, if i can get some of my objectives without having to put the whole war at risk then i normally find it to be worth it unless you're going for WC or some other time essential achievement that is.

My reason for posting this is to learn if I'm doing something wrong. I'll go ahead and give my results.

I didn't retreat. My analysis of the situation was similar to what @TheMeInTeam suggested. My general was good; my troops better. I advanced my reserves. Morocco arrived first and then my reserves arrived two days later.

Initially, I lead the war. But as someone suggested, then the die rolls started to cut against me. The 9 to 1 roll against me was not good. Still, it was even or slightly in my favor right up to the very bitter end. I held on thinking I would prevail, but Morocco lingered and lingered at 0 level (it was almost as if they received a buff at the end but that could just me feeling sorry for myself).

When I lost, I lost huge. My armies force retreated back to Seville. Morocco, desipe their losses, could now use fort mechanics (moving along ocean provinces) to advance all the way to Tangiers. As my manpower was recovering/draining, they were recruiting more units. Foolishly, I tried to cross again into Morocco with my now recovered armies and again lost. The warscore was now 45-ish. I peaced out with one of their allies and raised it to 50. Then I took the province in Portugal, Tangiers, Cuerta, and another two more provinces (5 total). Also some ducats.

But it wasn't a win. My manpower is now 0, many of my reginments are 0. My ruler just died and a 4/0/2 heir just stepped his place - meaning that the Castilian Civil War is now ticking down. Assuming a standard CCW, I don't even have enough regiments to defend.

One thought I had was to let the CCW fire, side with the better candidate (because anyone is going to better than my current ruler), and let the rebels wreck/save my country and continue on from there. Not sure what the malus of that would be though.

The thing is: I feel as if I should have handled this better but I'm not certain what I should have done. I welcome any advice.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Getting caught 18 vs 9 screws with deployment and while fire is weak right now, still gives you extra casualties. If they initiate while you're 22 vs 18 and the rolls are identical you're winning that fight most likely. Often the AI won't even take such a fight. You can even make it "dance" sometimes by repeatedly threatening the reinforcement and canceling it.

 

[True_Heir_of_Rome]

It sounds like you might come out of it in decent shape.

In order to preserve some manpower you could consolidate your troops and take a few mercs. Take as many royal marriages as you can so you can get an heir before the event fires. If the Civil war does fire you can try opening borders to your allies then declaring war on someone weak(Tlemcen maybe?). Sometimes your allies will fight your rebels. Another idea is to pick the worse of the two candidates then let the rebels win. Then you get the better of the two guys.

Some of that may be outdated, it's been a while since I let any disaster but C&C fire.

 

[cuendillar]

Occasionally, I've handled this mountain fort issue in a third way. Rather than having my reserves behind my siege army to protect it, I place it on a mountain tile between the siege and their army. If they engage that stack, all but a token force from the besiegers can reinforce and the mountain suddenly goes in my favour!

It's kind of situational though, sometimes there just isn't defensible terrain in between and sometimes ZoC makes it impossible to either place or reinforce the forward army.

 

[IrishGirl]

Getting caught 18 vs 9 screws with deployment and while fire is weak right now, still gives you extra casualties. If they initiate while you're 22 vs 18 and the rolls are identical you're winning that fight most likely. Often the AI won't even take such a fight. You can even make it "dance" sometimes by repeatedly threatening the reinforcement and canceling it.

To be clear: so when you say it screws with deployment, you mean that the units won't take full advantage of the combat width (infantry in the middle, cavalry flanking) and just sort of jump into the line somewhere?

You recognized one problem I was having: attrition. If I stack my armies (put all 22 on the same province) I suffer severe attrition. That's why I split them into two. I couldn't advance further because of fort mechanics. So I pulled them back, waited, but then the Moroccan stack suddenly appeared. I paused by they were already locked onto the province.

 

[Turbo215]

The thing is: I feel as if I should have handled this better but I'm not certain what I should have done. I welcome any advice.

I don't really think you could've handled that battle/siege any better, splitting stacks to reduce attrition is the better option here due to your reduced manpower because of prior wars, the decision to fight rather than retreat seemed better beforehand due to the numerical and qualitative advantage your troops held, ultimately the game just decided that you were going to lose that battle and you subsequently rolled badly/got unlucky and lost, although you had done well enough up to that point to still have enough war score to take several provinces even with those losses in battle. If I recall the CCW isn't too bad,it spawns a lot of smallish stacks so it should be possible to beat them if you want to, you could use mercs, garrison troops or demanding manpower from the nobility to make up for the shortfalls you have.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

To be clear: so when you say it screws with deployment, you mean that the units won't take full advantage of the combat width (infantry in the middle, cavalry flanking) and just sort of jump into the line somewhere?

You recognized one problem I was having: attrition. If I stack my armies (put all 22 on the same province) I suffer severe attrition. That's why I split them into two. I couldn't advance further because of fort mechanics. So I pulled them back, waited, but then the Moroccan stack suddenly appeared. I paused by they were already locked onto the province.

For attrition you put ~10 on a level 3 fort (so that outbreaks don't put you below min siege threshold) and reinforcement to combat width immediately adjacent. You must watch this situation like a hawk if it's a close war. You can often convince the AI to never attack by threatening reinforce, but that's not an option if they're already move locked. That also shouldn't happen if you're watching carefully.

Once you occupy a province you don't take attrition on it unless your troops > supply weight, so you don't need to keep split stacks distant from each other.

 

[Kergan]

Personally, I'd stay, but several remarks:

1. You should have more units on that fort. At least 10, since disease happens. But more to the point, with lots of enemy troops running around (with lots of cavalry and a cavalry combat ability bonus?), the last thing you want is to get caught like that. Attrition kills, but getting flanked while defending a siege kills more.

2. Having two generals helps for this type of situation. One for the siege, the other to bring in the reinforcements. And most importantly, to combine their stats during the battle: the game picks the general with the highest stat in each phase, plus you never know when a general will die.

3. As already noted, 5 shock is monstrous at this stage of the game and will easily compensate for the mountains. Arriving after the first days of fire damage will mean some damage but nothing too impactful. (I suspect you eventually lost the battle not just because of the terrible dice rolls but also because Morocco had plenty of cavalry and you did not.)

4. I'm assuming you had already done that, but in case not: it helps to shatter enemy armies before proceeding to siege down a mountain fort.

 

[IrishGirl]

... (I suspect you eventually lost the battle not just because of the terrible dice rolls but also because Morocco had plenty of cavalry and you did not.) ...

You may be right. In the battle described, 6 of my 22 units were cavalry. One unit of cavalry was on the siege stack and the other five were held in reserve stack.

I'm curious about this comment. Like many others, I've learned what I know about the game from watching YouTuber's like Arumba and reading the Wiki. What I've understood is that high cavalry armies are not efficient in the early game. Sure, cavalry - because of their shock benefit - rule the battlefield, but primarily as a flanking unit. This has been reinforced by a couple of reddit spreadsheets on army composition, suggesting no more than two or at the most four units of cavalry per stack of 12 to 14.

My army composition, during the early game when shock heavily impacts most battles, is something like 8 to 10 infantry with 2 to 4 cavalry (in stacks of 10 to 14). Even with that, I feel like I'm building more cavalry than I should. I used to build high cavalry armies (I like cavalry ) but people told me I was "doing it wrong."

So is this "internet wisdom" wrong? I'm happy to build standing armies with more cavalry if it's worth the money and it really does make a difference in battles. Another thing I was told by the player who taught me to play the game: (1) cavalry adds no benefit to a siege and (2) cavalry does not perform well in mountain provinces. Is this incorrect, because it's been driving a lot of decisions I make.